Separating yourself from your genre

[RysRyan]

Let's say you're a musician who makes hip hop music. Do you avoid listening to too much rap, and listen to all the other genres instead? I would imagine a lot of musicians do that so they can create an original sound, that doesn't sound like everything else. I don't study up on other people's bios, but I know that Kanye West listens to mostly rock, but makes hip hop. And his stuff sounds really good.


Or are you like me who will listen to one song, copy down the roots of it, and fix it into a whole other song, so that you can't even tell that it was influenced by something else. So in that case I listen to a lot of rap.

 

[Spud388]

Always depends what I'm going for with my next song

 

[Pumpthrust]

I used to listen to alot of hiphop, but over the last 5 or so years, i've been immersing myself in jazz, soul, and blues since i'm learning the guitar and piano. Though I started learning jazz and soul in order to add the feel of those genre's into my beats, the deeper I got into them, the more I found myself moving away from hiphop, production-wise. I still want to make hiphop type tracks, but there is something invigorating about playing bebop jazz standards with a full band, like this...



I think, in the beginning, you have to be willing to wear your influences on your sleeve as you're still a student of the game. I love Wes Montgomery and Grant Green, so I spend hours studying and copying their licks, not so I can be exactly like them, but so I can take those techniques and build upon them and develop my own style. Too many people in hiphop are afraid of "sounding like someone else" before they ever learned to make a sound at all. Nothing wrong with showing your influences, but that isn't all you should bring to the table.

 

[Aderito]

Mainly becuase hip hop is a hybrid form of genre, you need to branch out into uncharted territory especially if you want to create something that is your own.

Free beats @

SoundClick artist: Aderito - royalty-free, hip hop, beats, instrumentals, hardcore

 

[ObiK]

I used to listen to alot of hiphop, but over the last 5 or so years, i've been immersing myself in jazz, soul, and blues since i'm learning the guitar and piano. Though I started learning jazz and soul in order to add the feel of those genre's into my beats, the deeper I got into them, the more I found myself moving away from hiphop, production-wise. I still want to make hiphop type tracks, but there is something invigorating about playing bebop jazz standards with a full band, like this...



I think, in the beginning, you have to be willing to wear your influences on your sleeve as you're still a student of the game. I love Wes Montgomery and Grant Green, so I spend hours studying and copying their licks, not so I can be exactly like them, but so I can take those techniques and build upon them and develop my own style. Too many people in hiphop are afraid of "sounding like someone else" before they ever learned to make a sound at all. Nothing wrong with showing your influences, but that isn't all you should bring to the table.

That song is awesome. I'm with you. I listen to a lot of hip hop, but rarely the radio or TV. I try to stick to blogs and find music I like. Then a ton of Jazz, be bop, R&B and latin music to help increase my musical diet and vocabulary so to speak.

 

[enthalpybeats]

I think it's good to separate from your genre from time to time. Listening to other kinds of music in creating tracks in style of them can teach you new interesting rhytmic pattern, some production tricks etc. Beside rap music, I listen to lots of other genres: rock, blues, soul, classical/orchestra music.

 

[loftusjuke]

Wide musical vocabulary is alfa omega.